Decking the halls with boughs of holly is not such an easy task in Newport, Rhode Island. Their opulent estates are each a city block long. The historic seaport gets into the Holiday spirit with a month-long citywide celebration simply called Christmas in Newport. The long list of activities includes Victorian dinners at the Astors’ Beechwood Mansion, tours of the rarely visited estate of Doris Duke, and lantern walks over the twisting cobblestone streets.
Newport is also home to a slew of intriguing boutique shops. Near the mansions,
Alloy Gallery (125 Bellevue Avenue) is owned by a Rhode Island School of Design-trained jewelry artist who displays contemporary wares created by her and her colleagues. On the corner of Spring and Church, Macdowell Pottery features crafts, towels, and women’s scarves. More women’s clothing—blouses, dresses, and jackets adorned with colorful summer prints, can be found at Tyler Boe, at Bannister’s Wharf. The kids will like the quirky games, clothing, books, and other odd miscellaneous knickknacks found at Pleasant Surprise on Thames Street. Close by is the Newport Historical Society Gift Shop, selling sea soap, shells, gardening and history books on New England, and my personal favorite, the Gurglepot, a jug that makes a gurgling noise when pouring water.
North of Freeport, Maine, fingers of land dangle down from coastal Route 1 to create miles of sheltered bays to paddle. One of my favorite spots is Georgetown, where last June, I rented a room at Coveside B&B and had Seaspray Kayaking deliver an oceanworthy kayak to their docks. Careful not to start or end near low tide (or I’ll be digging for clams in the muck), I paddled south past the lobster boats to the Five Islands Lobster Company wharf. On the way, I spotted ospreys sitting atop their oversized nests, seals popping their heads out of the water like periscopes, and the distinctive orange beak of the American Oystercatcher. Yet, the reason this little jaunt makes my list of top five favorite days is the kayaking north on Little Sheepscot River, sheltered from the surf by MacMahan Island. The boulder-strewn shoreline is draped in seaweed and topped with velvety moss, creating a soothing, shady retreat in the late afternoon hours. An image that I remember vividly more than six months later. 
To commemorate the 150th anniversary of the publication of Henry David Thoreau’s “The Maine Woods,” the 
One of my favorite topics to write about the last couple years is how urban designers and landscape architects have recently created parks from contaminated settings, landfills, abandoned manufacturing plants, and no longer viable space such as an elevated train track on the lower West Side of Manhattan, now the popular High Line Park. Former brownfields like a 9-acre parcel of land on Puget Sound, once dotted with UNOCAL’s oil tanks, is now home to Seattle’s Olympic Sculpture Park. Landschaftspark in Duisburg-Nord, Germany, is a former coal and steel plant that now features a high ropes course. 
One of the main reasons I gave Stowe top billing in this month’s Yankee Magazine cover story on New England’s top winter towns is due to the creation of 
On my last two trips to Costa Rica, I wisely spent the final night at 
Wayne Curtis is best known as author of